A chafer is a device for maintaining pre-cooked food at a remote location relative to the kitchen where the food is cooked. The chafer is supported upon a transportable wire stand hereinafter referred to as a "wire chafing stand" and is preferably composed of steel. The wire chafing stand of the present invention is a relatively simple structure having an upper rim and a lower rim interconnected to each other by means of wire legs. The wire legs are preferably welded to the upper and lower rims at the corners of the structure with the wire legs extending below the lower rim so that they also function as bottom supports to keep the stand level with the ground and to maintain the lower rim at a predetermined height above ground level for placement of chafing fuel heaters for the chafing dish in the stand.
Wire chafing stands are transported and stored nested together in multiple units. Presently, wire chafing stands permit the stands to be partially nested into one another when stacked i.e., the stands nest only to a limited extent. The cost of storage and transportation has a direct relationship to the vertical height of a stack of nested wire stands. Accordingly, for wire stands with only limited nesting capability the transportation cost for transporting such wire stands over long distances becomes a significant factor in its selling price. This, in turn, reduces the ability to compete over large geographical areas where transportation cost and/or storage cost become too large. Although many solutions have been proposed which permit deep nesting of multiple stands to reduce the vertical column height of a stack of nested stands such prior solutions were dependent upon complicated wire stand designs which otherwise increase the cost of fabrication and cause the stand to be unwieldy structurally as well as esthetically. An even further problem of significance relates to the ease of removal of the wire stands from one another after nesting. Generally if the wire stands are tightly nested they tend to wedge into one another and are then difficult to separate. Thus it is important that when nesting multiple wire stands that the wire stands do not wedge and are readily separable from one another.